SALEM, Ore. — Marion County jail inmates soon won’t be able to get letters from the outside. They’ll have to settle for postcards.

Starting as soon as Jan. 1, jail officials are going to limit incoming and outgoing mail to postcards only. Current policy allows letters with no limit on the number of pages. The policy will save the county money and man-hours spent sorting through more than 1,000 pieces of general mail inmates receive each week.

“We’re not trying to be mean or make people upset,” Marion County Sheriff Jason Myers said. “It’s about efficiency and safety in the workplace.”

Inmates will be required to purchase standardized pre-stamped 3.5-by-8.5-inch postcards from a commissary. The postcards feature a photo of the jail. The new rules will not affect mail to and from public officials or legal mail.

The benefits of the new policy include decreased traffic of contraband items through the jail, as well as saving time and costs, Marion County jail Cmdr. Jeff Holland said. The most common contraband item deputies find is pornography, Holland said.

Contraband has “been a problem off and on as long as I’ve been in the business — 23 years,” Holland said. Each year, the county spends about $60,000 to cover man-hours spent sorting jail mail, Holland said.

“We estimate by going to the postcard system we can cut that by half,” Holland said.

It takes about nine hours per day to process mail, Holland said. That amount of time will be scaled back, and deputies will use the time to patrol the grounds and focus on safety, the sheriff said.

“We’ll be able to refocus the time on safety and security of the facility,” Myers said.

When mail is delivered to the jail, it is first sorted by an administrative staffer, according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Lt. Sheila Lorance.

Deputies then open the mail and remove the envelope flap and stamp, checking for contraband items and making sure the piece doesn’t violate the mail policy, sheriff’s officials said. Deputies will keep searching the mail for blacklisted items.

For inmates, their families and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, the policy calls into question the role of communication in the life of an inmate.

“We think that it is a bad policy if it is going to limit the way the inmates are going to be able to communicate with their families in a meaningful way,” said Jann Carson, associate director of the ACLU of Oregon.

Carson was not familiar with the Marion County jail’s plans but spoke generally of the importance of communication between inmates and family.

“One of the best ways that we make ex-convicts reintegrate is keeping those ties to families while they are incarcerated,” Carson said. “If this policy is going to make that more difficult, that is troubling.”

Timothy Jones, 47, is serving a sentence in the jail for a probation violation.

“I don’t know what you can say on a 3-by-8,” Jones said. “Some of us got kids and other things that we need to discuss with our families.”

Jones said he was worried some families might not be able to afford postcards and stamps. He said when posters went up on bulletin boards in the jail last week, inmates were generally worried.

There were “a lot of people with animosity toward it,” Jones said. “They’re deeply concerned.”

As an inmate, Jones doesn’t know that he has the resources to fight back. When asked if the policy is fair, Jones seemed indifferent.

“I’m incarcerated; what is fair?” he said. “I think it is more unfair to our families.”

The Marion County jail serves as a holding facility for people awaiting trial and convicted offenders serving less than one-year sentences. Convicted offenders sentenced to more than one year in custody are transferred to prisons supervised by the Department of Corrections.

Sondelyn Laughlin of Keizer writes to a longtime family friend in custody, sometimes sending three letters per week.

“I know a lot of people that depend on family letters to uplift them and keep them part of their life,” Laughlin said. “This will even affect those who are not convicted yet, and that seems barbaric.”

Laughlin said she was upset and sad when she heard about the new policy. Though it has created an obstacle, she won’t stop writing to her friend.

“I guess I’ll have to write 10 postcards a day,” she said. “Like pages of a letter, it will be pages of a postcard.”

Holland said he didn’t know of any other Oregon jails that allow only single-sheet postcards, though he said about 15 jails were seriously considering it.

At this time, neither the Polk County jail nor Oregon Department of Corrections is considering a postcard-only policy.

Marion County’s new mail system is modeled after one used in Maricopa County, Ariz., Holland said.

That jail piloted the postcard-only program in May 2007 after it was suggested by an employee, according to Lt. Robert Eastlund with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

The restrictions significantly cut back on contraband items, especially drugs, and gang messages being passed into the jail, Eastlund said.

When it was first implemented at the Phoenix jail, the county was sued. The case went to the federal district court, which ruled in favor of the jail and found there was no infringement on communication, Eastlund said. Inmates still had the ability to use telephones for private conversations, he said.

“We weren’t violating anybody’s civil rights,” Eastlund said. “There is no right to privacy when it comes to this.”

The policy’s two-year tenure at the 9,100-inmate jail system has been a success. However, it hasn’t entirely stopped attempts to send contraband to inmates. Deputies are starting to find contraband slipped between the sheets of postcards, Eastlund said.